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Health and Wellness by Prime Positioning: The US

General wellbeing leads the way

Euromonitor International’s latest health and wellness statistics update reveals that the global health and wellness market has surpassed the US$600 billion mark for the first time. The US remains the world’s biggest market for health and wellness foods and beverages, at US$153 billion in retail value, accounting for one quarter of global sales.

The largest category, accounting for close to 40% of US health and wellness sales, is that of general wellbeing, which includes the sizeable organics category. Among the leading brands in terms of value share are many naturally healthy juice brands such as PepsiCo’s Tropicana and its Coca-Cola rival Minute Maid, as well as Kraft’s naturally healthy nuts brand Planters.

Part of the reason why general wellbeing is such a popular health and wellness platform is precisely because it does not make any overt allusions to “disease”. It may be true that consumers who have already been diagnosed with a specific condition, such as high blood pressure or diabetes, will purposely seek out products that claim to alleviate or help with the management of these ailments, but in many cases it is unnecessary – or even counterproductive – for manufacturers to label their offerings as such. Besides having to traipse carefully around the issue of which precise wording and claims the US FDA may currently permit, forging connotations between a product and a disease can put consumers off a product, and needlessly narrows down a potential mainstream audience to a select target group.

For consumers looking for products suitable for managing specific health concerns, the media has done much of the groundwork already. Virtually all US consumers nowadays have a broad awareness of which foods and beverages are healthy and which ones are not, and all the media attention lavished on the impact nutrition can have on many common health conditions, including the value of superfoods, has ensured that consumers know what to look out for in the aisles of supermarkets and health food stores. For instance, products labelled as high in antioxidants and/or omega-3 are just as suitable for consumers concerned about cardiovascular disease as they are for those worried about their cognitive health. Partly for this reason, no notable market exists yet in the US for products leveraging brain health and memory as a prime positioning platform.

Health and Wellness by Prime Positioning: The US

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